Is the glass half-full or half-empty? In the movies, at least, the balance between hope and suffering usually tilts decisively toward hope. That is the predominant mood of “The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2013,” an anthology of three programs: live action, documentary and animation.

The live-action shorts are stronger than usual this year. In both “Buzkashi Boys,” set in Afghanistan, and “Asad,” in a Somali fishing village, the vitality and the adventurous spirit of preadolescent boys mitigate the surrounding despair and misery. The urchins of “Buzkashi Boys” are best friends who dream of mastering the brutal national sport of buzkashi, polo played with a dead goat. The movie, directed by Sam French and filmed in Afghanistan, is not about war or religion but about ordinary life in a place where spirited, rebellious children play daredevil games just as they do everywhere else in the world. The time comes when one must accept his destiny to be a blacksmith like his stern father, and wordless father-son eye contact seals their bond.

The young protagonist of Bryan Buckley’s “Asad,” filmed at a Kenyan refugee camp with a Somali refugee cast, faces an occupational choice between piracy and fishing. In this fine little film a fluffy cat rescued from a yacht littered with the corpses of murdered captives is brought back and mistaken by the villagers for a white lion.

Beauty triumphs over morbidity in Tom Van Avermaet’s “Death of a Shadow.” This exquisite, surreal fantasy stars Matthias Schoenaerts as a dead World War I soldier who, armed with a camera, is given a second chance at life by helping a sinister collector capture the shadows of men at the moment they die. The film’s elegant gadgetry includes a time machine.

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Fawad Mohammadi in a scene from “Buzkashi Boys.”CreditSam French and Ariel Nasr/The Afghan Film Project

“Henry,” Yan England’s portrait of an aging musician losing his memory, resembles a fusion of Ingmar Bergman’s “Wild Strawberries” and Michael Haneke’s “Amour.” If it lacks the acute emotional focus of those two masterpieces, it is still an ambitious attempt to portray worsening dementia from the inside.

Shawn Christensen’s “Curfew” is a sensitive exploration of the strife and reconciliation of a suicidal New Yorker and his abused sister, a single mother with a precocious daughter.

Although the subjects of four of this year’s five documentary shorts include poverty, homelessness, cancer and heart disease, none could be described as despairing. Sean Fine and Andrea Nix’s “Inocente” is a glowing portrait of a homeless 15-year-old illegal immigrant, a gifted painter living in San Diego who tells her story directly to the camera.

The good Samaritans in “Mondays at Racine,” directed by Cynthia Wade, are two sisters whose Long Island hair salon offers free beauty services to women undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. The reflections of these women, who expose their bodies along with their deepest fears, are wrenching.

The heroes of Keif Davidson’s “Open Heart” — Dr. Emmanuel Rusingiza, a Rwandan cardiologist, and Dr. Gino Strada, the chief surgeon at the Salam Center for Cardiac Surgery in Khartoum, Sudan — arrange for eight ailing Rwandan children to be given free lifesaving operations.

In the strikingly upbeat “Redemption,” directed by Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill, New Yorkers who eke out an existence by collecting and redeeming cans and bottles tell their stories. These hardy survivors are remarkably devoid of self-pity.

Oddly, the people interviewed in the saddest documentary, “Kings Point,” directed by Sari Gilman, are the most comfortably situated. These older men and women, thinking they had found paradise, moved to a retirement resort in Florida in the 1970s. But they now find themselves bored, cut off from their children and among thinning ranks.

Of the animated shorts the cleverest, Timothy Reckart’s “Head Over Heels,” is a diabolical exercise in stop-motion animation in which an estranged, long-married couple occupy the same house in an upside-down world. One lives on the ceiling, the other on the floor, and they keep colliding.

In John Kahrs’s wistful black-and-white “Paperman,” set in mid-20th-century Manhattan, a man in an office tries to catch the attention of a woman he fancies by tossing paper gliders out a window toward her.

Minkyu Lee’s “Adam and Dog” is a bland, whimsical fantasy of the first meeting of man and dog in the Garden of Eden. David Silverman’s “Maggie Simpson in ‘The Longest Daycare’ ” is a fragment spun off from “The Simpsons.” In “Fresh Guacamole,” by the animator PES, a k a Adam Pesapane, yummy-looking food is created by slicing up familiar objects, which morph into other forms. The concentrated visual magic of this short is thrilling.

Oscar Nominated Short Films 2013

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Three programs of short films. The animated short film program includes Minkyu Lee’s “Adam and Dog,” PES’s “Fresh Guacamole,” Timothy Reckart’s “Head Over Heels,” David Silverman’s “Maggie Simpson in ‘The Longest Daycare’ ” and John Kahrs’s “Paperman.” The live-action short film program includes Bryan Buckley’s “Asad,” Sam French’s “Buzkashi Boys,” Shawn Christensen’s “Curfew,” Tom Van Avermaet’s “Death of a Shadow” and Yan England’s “Henry.” The documentary short film program includes Sean Fine and Andrea Nix’s “Inocente,” Sari Gilman’s “Kings Point,” Cynthia Wade’s “Mondays at Racine,” Keif Davidson’s “Open Heart,” and Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill’s “Redemption.” Released by ShortsHD and Magnolia Pictures. In various languages. Animated program running time: 40 minutes. Live-action program running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. Documentary program running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. These films are not rated.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C11 of the New York edition with the headline: Far From Epic Length, but on the Shortlist for Oscar Glory. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe